No photos...it's Father's Day!

Sunday September 1^st

Our pedometer reading today is a minimal 4.3 k’s but we actually covered a lot of ground!

We were pretty concerned when we woke up and heard very strong winds blowing outside because our 3 hour ferry ride to Dublin today could be really rocking and rolling if it’s windy.

Although it’s not Father’s Day here in the UK Adam & Peta both spoke to Andrew this morning and wished him a Happy Father’s Day :-) I couldn’t speak to my dad because he and mum were out and about all afternoon and evening…they are such social butterflies! We have been talking to them on Skype most days so we’ll catch up again tomorrow.

After breakfast we set the GPS for Holyhead in Wales, only 75 k’s away. We started out travelling under the Mersey River through a 3 kilometre tunnel. We’re hoping that there won’t be so many roundabouts in Wales and Ireland…England has a huge number of them just like the ones at home but some of them are huge and believe it or not some of them even have traffic lights installed!

It was a lovely drive along the north coast of Wales with beautiful views across the Irish Sea and our first sight of the stunning Snowdonia mountain range. In quite a few places the road passes through impressive tunnels under the huge mountains…we look forward to exploring more of Wales when we return from Ireland.

We arrived at Holyhead in plenty of time for the ferry because we weren’t quite sure about the procedure…we shouldn’t have worried because it was really well organized and easy to negotiate. We didn’t take any photos today but will on our return journey. It’s a roll on, roll off ferry so we drove onto deck 5 and then found a comfy spot upstairs. It was quite a relief to hear the captain tell us that the weather for our crossing looked good and it should be a smooth crossing. It was a relaxed journey…I did some duty free shopping, we had some lunch and I worked on the blog. On arrival in Dublin it was time to head back to the car and drive off the ferry…no drama at all.

I’m afraid our GPS doesn’t have an Irish voice so Howard with his English accent will be our guide in Ireland. He guided us to the Baggot Court Mews where we’ll stay for the next 3 nights. Andrew had to do some precision driving down a lane, then an alley and then through an archway only inches wider than the car and then finally into a very narrow parking spot.

We settled in, decided to use the laundry service here, bundled it all up, gave it to our host and walked to a local pub for dinner. We really enjoyed, the atmosphere, hospitality and food.

Good night all…no photo’s today...I’m sure there’ll be plenty tomorrow.